Forty Hall Museum
North London’s Jacobean surprise: a 1620s gabled manor set in rolling parkland, orchards and lakes. Built for Sir Nicholas Rainton—silk merchant, Lord Mayor, and consummate self-promoter—Forty Hall mixes period rooms with light-touch local history so families can explore without museum fatigue. The real joy is how house, farm and landscape still talk to each other: a short loop takes you from carved staircases to veteran trees and back for coffee by the lake.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Great Stair & Hall
A Jacobean ‘first impression’ machineDark timber, portrait glances and a confidently wide stair telegraph the owner’s rise from trade to power.
📍 Ground floor, entrance range
Withdrawing Room
Status with a fireplacePanelled walls and deep windows show how comfort and display were stitched together in the 1620s.
📍 First floor, south front
Estate Loop Walk
House + landscape = one designA quick circuit reveals how views were framed to sell ‘country’ calm a day’s ride from the City.
📍 Lake–Orchard–Lime Avenue
Forty Hall Farm
Working farm next to a manorAnimals, veg beds and a community vineyard keep the estate productive—just as it was meant to be.
📍 North of the house
Inspire your Friends
- Forty Hall was built for Sir Nicholas Rainton, a wealthy silk merchant who became Lord Mayor of London in 1632—the house is a billboard for a self-made man.
- The estate sits above the course of the Turkey Brook; the lake you see today began life as a managed water feature for fish and reflection.
- A short walk away is Elsyng Palace (archaeological site), a Tudor royal residence where Henry VIII stayed—so your Jacobean house has Tudor neighbours.
- The farm includes a community-run vineyard: London wine from a 17th-century estate is very much a 21st-century twist.
